A groundbreaking look at the transition to sound in the French Cinema.

This revised and updated edition of a successful and established text provides a much-needed historical overview of French cinema from its roots through to the political and social developments in the 1990s and beyond.

Examines the way in which Sophocles' play "Oedipus Tyrannus" and its hero, Oedipus, King of Thebes, were probably received in their own time and place, and relates this to twentieth-century receptions and interpretations, including those of Sigmund Freud.

Colin Crisp re-evaluates the stylistic evolution of the classic French cinema, and represents the New Wave film-makers as its natural heirs rather than the mould-breakers they perceived themselves to be.

The advent of color, big musicals, the studio system, and the beginning of institutionalized censorship made the thirties the defining decade for Hollywood. The year 1939, celebrated as "Hollywood's greatest year," saw the release of such memorable films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach. It was a time when the studios exercised nearly absolute control over their product as well as over such stars as Bette Davis, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart. In this fifth volume of the award-winning series History of the American Cinema, Tino Balio examines every aspect of the filmmaking and film exhibition system as it matured during the Depression era.

Deals with feminism and melodrama